


Okay

by sibley (ferns)



Category: Secret Six
Genre: Birthday Party, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Suicidal Ideation, Underage Drinking, but it's mostly comfort, learning how to be okay again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-23 11:10:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14933111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: It's Lori's eighteenth birthday party. She's not really sure how to celebrate.





	Okay

**Author's Note:**

> The relationships between the characters in the 2015 Secret Six run are good you guys are just mean.
> 
> This is another one of those things I've written to get through my own Stuff™.

Lori knows that she could get up to the roof using magic, but that’ll just draw attention to her that she doesn’t want from the partygoers on the ground, and besides, it’ll feel nicer if she does it herself, anyway. She scales up Mary’s tree and jumps from one branch to the roof, which sends a jolt up through her spine that makes her knees sting. Lori balances on the edge until she reaches the other side of the roof, where she sits down with her knees hugged to her chest.

The drop wasn’t  _ that  _ far down. If she-if she  _ fell,  _ she’d probably just break her leg or her arm or her collarbone, not her neck. And that was only if her magic didn’t subconsciously catch her before she could hit the ground.

“Hey, sweetie,” a voice calls up from the ground, and Lori stops looking at the horizon and looks straight down at where Ralph is standing in the front yard with his hands cupped around his mouth. Once he’s gotten her attention, he stretches his neck up so he’s eye to eye with her. “Whatcha doing up here? You’re missing your own birthday party.”

Lori shrugs a little. “Just wanted a break from everything, I guess. It’s fine.”

“Hmm.” Ralph stretches his arms up so his hands are next to her on the roof, then snaps the rest of his body up to meet them and pulls himself up beside her. “We haven’t even opened your presents yet. I’m pretty sure Scandal got you a really cool sword. I know how much you like cool swords.”

She can’t even smile, just rests her chin on her knees and touches at the almost-empty bottle of bourbon that she has stashed up here. Deciding that there’s no use trying to hide it, she picks it up and takes a sip from the bottle. Ralph frowns at her. She holds out the bottle to him. “Want a drink?”

He takes the bottle but doesn’t drink from it and sets it down on his other side where she can’t reach it instead. “You know you’re not supposed to be drinking. Got a few more years ‘til then, kiddo. Don’t be like me.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She lies back on the roof, folding her hands under her head and looking up at the dark sky. The clouds are covering any stars, and for a moment she thinks she can just barely see one, but it turns out to be a plane instead. “Sometimes I like to go up on rooftops and think. By myself. Without any distractions. It’s nice. I don’t have to listen to anyone or do what anybody tells me to do. Not when I’m up there. Not when I’m up  _ here.” _

“What do you think about?” Ralph flops back and rolls over onto his side so he can look at her, propping his head up on his elbow. He traces his fingertips around a patch of moss.

Lori swallows. “I used to think about-you know. Jumping. Ending things. Doing stuff like that. ‘Specially once my dad’s cancer showed up. And after he died in that car crash. I just… I didn’t know what to do and I thought-” Her eyes burn with tears and she sniffles loudly. “I just thought that maybe it would be better if I…”

“If you killed yourself?” She can feel Ralph looking a her as she says it, but she can’t make eye contact. Instead, she goes back to looking out over the horizon at the lights of the city far away from the suburbs but not far enough to be invisible. “Do you still feel like that?”

Lori almost wishes he sounded judgemental. She squeezes her eyes shut against the tears. “No,” she whispers around the tightness in her throat. “That’s why I’m up here thinking. Because I realized that I didn’t anymore. And-and I can’t remember  _ not  _ wanting to, you know? It’s like… It’s been a part of me for so long that I’ve forgot what it’s like to  _ not  _ want to die.” She rubs at her eyes a little angrily. “I hate it. I fucking hate it.”

“I know how you feel,” Ralph says gently. “Not  _ exactly.  _ But after Sue-after I thought she was gone, things got really bad.  _ Really  _ bad. You saw some of that, remember? On the pier? I would’ve done it. I would’ve let her kill me. There were a lot of times when things got bad like that. A lot of times when I was just one drink away from doing it. One more bad night. One more nightmare.”

“And things are better now?” It’s not like Lori didn’t know, not really. She was there on the pier and she was with him in that godawful coffin when the world went to hell around their ears. But she doesn’t like to think about it. About weird dumb Ralph who hosts movie nights and can’t always control how loudly he’s talking and who faced down Superman for  _ her _ and was the first one to care about her in years being… Like her.

“Yeah,” he says softly, looking off into the distance with her. “A lot better. Some of it-a lot of it-was Sue. After she came back. But I had something to live for before that, too. Before she came back. I just didn’t always know it.”

“What was it?” Lori sits up on her hands. It’s really, really hard to be comfortable on a roof. She really needs to bring an umbrella and some cushions up here one of these days.

Ralph sits up too, beaming at her in that funny way he does when he’s not sure how much is too much and he accidentally ends up stretching his mouth a little bit  _ too  _ wide. It’s surprisingly endearing, even if it’s really creepy sometimes. “You kids.”

“Sap,” Lori accuses lightly, finally looking at him and praying he doesn’t comment on her running mascara and smudged purple lipstick. “...How did you get used to it?”

“Get used to what? Living with you little monsters?” Ralph reaches out and squeezes her knee with his spindly fingers to let her know that he’s joking. There’s a fresh coat of pink and black and white polish on his nails-Kani must have been trying to make flowers again. They look more like stars, but they’ve improving.

“Being okay again.” Humiliatingly, her voice cracks. She coughs to try to cover it up. “How did you get used to being okay? Even if you didn’t know if it was permanent or not?”

“Sweetie, if I ever figure that out, I’ll let you know, okay?” He tells her gently. “But I’m glad we are. I’m glad  _ you  _ are.”

“I’m glad you are too.” She scoots a little closer to him and rests her head on his shoulder. “Really, really glad.”

He gives her a little side hug. Lori’s still getting used to the people here actually enjoying her company. To being cared about in a way that she hasn’t been in so long. She knows they  _ all  _ are, Ralph and Sue included, but that doesn’t make it any less strange. Especially when his arm snakes around her waist like a snake and squeezes her tightly.

“Ugh,” Lori says after about five minutes. “I dunno about you, dude, but  _ I’m  _ freezing my tits off out here.”

He laughs loudly in her ear and uncoils his arm from around her. “C’mon, kiddo. Let’s go inside and start opening your presents. I’m sure everyone will be happy to see that you’re back.”

“Alright.” She stands up and balances on the edge of the roof again until Ralph drops safely to the ground and then reaches up to pull her down beside him. “So, if Scandal got me a sword, what did  _ you  _ get me?”

“You’ll see.” It probably didn’t come out as ominous sounding as Ralph was intending-it was definitely more on the cheerful side than anything else, and the giggling that came afterward ruined whatever effect it  _ had  _ managed to have. “I can’t wait to watch you open it.”

He opens the door and ushers her into the house. Lori took one last deep breath of the nighttime air, inhaling the not quite distant smell of weed, spilled beer, and cigarette smoke before she steps inside.

She can hear Sue’s familiar loud raspy laugh echoing through the house from somewhere upstairs. Mary’s tablet is firing out a rapid stream of words like  _ riboflavin  _ and  _ iridescent.  _ She likes to do that, sometimes, to listen to the way the machine said them. Kani and Jeannette are engaging in a frankly disgusting public display of affection on the couch. Thomas and Floyd are talking quietly in the corner, or at least that’s what Lori knows their excuse would be if someone took a picture of them.

She can see the edge of Bane’s shoulder in the doorway to the kitchen, with Liana beside him letting him gently touch her steadily growing baby bump. Merkel is dangling from the ceiling light, trying not to spill non-alcoholic punch on the floor and pretty miserably failing. Scandal and Kay are shouting about something in the backyard, and Lori assumes that was where Nanaue was too, which is confirmed when she hears him shout “I’m not going to eat the dog!” so loudly it shakes the walls.

Lori sits down on the couch next to Kani and Jeannette, laughing as she watches Ralph try to wrangle everyone into a group so that they can give her the presents they brought. It doesn’t have much of an affect until Sue joins his efforts, accomplishing in a few seconds what her husband hadn’t managed to do in fifteen minutes.

Yeah, Lori’s pretty sure she’s going to be okay. Maybe not forever. And it’s scary. But for now, she’s okay.


End file.
